Prelude To Epilogue
by Parlour1
Summary: The loss of a team-member can have devastating effects. A/N: Minor spoilers for "Meridian"; please review!!


Prelude / Epilogue  
By Parlour1 (finished Wednesday 25th September 2002)  
  
Thanks: to Daniel and Susan  
  
Related To Episode: "Meridian"  
  
Season: 5  
  
Disclaimer: If you think I own any of these characters, then think again. I only own the flute. Or at least, my friend does.  
  
Summary: The death of a team-member can have devastating effects  
  
Rating: G  
  
Feed back: I would really appreciate your comments! All you need to do is to click that review button! Or email me at isabelle@gateworld.net  
  
Author's Note: The first three parts of the following story is my speculation of what happened before the fatal episode. The rest of the viewpoints are my speculations of what would have happened after the episode.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
The wrapped bundle was placed on her lab table. The postman strode off, with other mail, parcels, and deliveries in his bags waiting to reach their intended owners.  
  
Major Samantha Carter watched him go. She then quickly went, picked up the package, and sat at the chair at her spare desk. She hurriedly removed the wrapping, like a child who had just received their long anticipated birthday gift, and, grinning, pulled out a small hard-case.  
  
She un-hatched the locks on the side and opened the lid. Her eyes gleamed with delight. She hadn't touched one of the petite things since she'd been appointed to her current title.  
  
Picking up the three pieces, she assembled them, just as her grandfather had taught her all those years back, to form one conjoined, glistening instrument just demanding to be played.  
  
Sam thought back to her lessons. She'd given them up since she'd finished college, but remembered each teaching well. She had been one of the most promising musicians.  
  
She put the flute to her lips, gently closing her eyes. Her fingers moved of their own accord.  
  
*  
  
Colonel Jonathon O'Neill took a bite of his sandwich. The lunchroom was empty. It always would be by the time he'd get there. Just as well, for he enjoyed quiet meals, meals without Jackson yakking on about God knows what and spilling coffee where-ever he went, without his Major trying to explain astro-physics to him, and without General Hammond breathing down his neck.  
  
He was almost finished his food when a high, shrill, piercing, unfamiliar sound floated through the walls. He raised an eyebrow.  
  
Dr. Janet Fraser chose that moment to walk in. She had an empty tea-mug in hand. She spied the estranged Colonel. "Don't tell me you've never heard a flute before, Sir," she said incredulously.  
  
"Oh, a flute, right," O'Neill mumbled, clearly embarrassed. He got up, discarded the various stained items on the table, and pushed his chair in.  
  
Janet reached for one of the kettles on the bench. O'Neill was instantly at her side and pushing it away from her.  
  
"Not that one. Daniel sort of, you know, couldn't keep his head on straight, one of, you know, his, err, experiments?" He tried, miserably.  
  
Janet smiled and put aside the kettle, instead reaching for another. "I suggest you fell victim to his antics."  
  
The Colonel decided it was a good time to leave. He made up his mind that all doctors were exasperating no matter what their gender. A dreadful thought came to mind. "Do you know who's playing . . . That thing?"  
  
Janet filled her mug, and, with her back to him, replied, "I don't have a clue."  
  
"Let's just hope it's not Daniel," he muttered, heading off.  
  
*  
  
"Hello Major Carter."  
  
Sam stopped playing and glanced at the door. Teal'c was there, his usual strong, rigid form seeming to fill the doorway. He was the politest person she'd ever met. "Afternoon Teal'c."  
  
The Jaffa stept in, staring squarely at the flute in her hand. "Excuse me."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"What is that?"  
  
"Sorry?" - Carter was bewildered until she glanced down. "Oh, this?" She held it up for him to see and could have sworn he stept back an inch. "It's a flute."  
  
"A flute?"  
  
"Yes. A flute is an instrument. A woodwind one."  
  
"Why is this classified as woodwind when it is a flute?"  
  
"The flute belongs to the woodwind family of instruments. You make music, by playing it. Listen."  
  
Carter proceeded to demonstrate by playing some scales.  
  
"I see," the Jaffa noted, as she stopped.  
  
Sam picked up the case and began packing the instrument. Teal'c watched her every movement. He was surprised to see her take the flute apart and then place the pieces in their corresponding spots in the small case.  
  
He waited until she'd put the case away neatly into one of her cabinets before saying, "I do not think I am accustomed to the sound of the flute."  
  
"My playing, is it too loud?"  
  
"No, no, Major Carter. I am not used to hearing such music that is all. Your playing I like very much."  
  
Sam smiled, blushing. "Do you like the flute, Teal'c?"  
  
"Yes. I believe so."  
  
Dr. Daniel Jackson's head popped through the doorway, his eyes mischievous. "Ready to go, you guys?"  
  
The three headed off down the corridor to the Star Gate gateway for their assigned mission.  
  
*  
  
Sam drearily stumbled to her lab. Reality had been shoved in their faces. Daniel was dead.  
  
Oh, no, she remembered O'Neill say, he's just ascended.  
  
Just ascended? Great. Thanks Daniel! Where are you, you four-eyed freak!  
  
Yeah, fine. You just go running off to Oma. You just leave us here like miserable wretches.  
  
Shame on you Daniel!  
  
She opened her cabinet, took out the flute case, assembled it, and played like a mad woman. Finally, in disgust, she tore it form her lips, and, furious, flung it at the wall. The instrument flew, and crashed through the window, taking the broken pieces with it. A loud crash and splitting added to the situation before all turned silent.  
  
Not aware of anything that had just happened and too heart-wrenched to care, she sank down against the tableside and howled.  
  
*  
  
Janet's eyes bore into the white fabric of the infirmary bed. The sheets looked as if they'd never been touched, and yet someone had died there, on the very bed: Daniel Jackson.  
  
She and her nurses had all seen the blood. There'd been so much of it. The pain, and the inevitable hours leading up to the death.  
  
Not just any death, for the man had actually chosen to die so that he could ascend.  
  
Did ascension actually mean something more, a meaning that only a linguist could decipher?  
  
Was he dead or alive? She was a doctor. Doctors looked at the facts. If a patient was not alive, they were dead. There was nothing more to it.  
  
Yet she clearly remembered the times when Daniel had been brought in, thought dead, but actually alive though with no signs of life.  
  
Are you dead Daniel?  
  
She dabbed her eyes with the tissue in her hand.  
  
Don't answer that question.  
  
*  
  
General George Hammond had heard the sound of splitting glass, and was rushing down the corridor. Seeing Major Carter's lab door wide open, he rushed in; to find the woman drowned in tears on the floor. He glanced around the room, found nothing out of place except for some stray folders that had mysteriously landed on the floor, and ruffled his brows; for Carter was never know to be untidy, at least never as untidy as Dr. Jackson was. Was - well, there was something.  
  
He stood in front of Carter who didn't seem to notice him. "Major Carter?"  
  
The crumbled woman shook her head vigorously.  
  
Hammond knelt down. "What happened?"  
  
"You know what happened," Carter barked bitterly, not glancing up. "Daniel's dead."  
  
"No, what happened after-wards?"  
  
"I threw it away!"  
  
"Threw what?"  
  
Carter eyed him coolly. She was not in the mood for questionings, not now, not when everything was wrong. "What do you think?"  
  
Hammond stood and encircled the room, replacing strewn items back on her desk as he went. He came across a small case lying on the floor near her cabinet, picked it up, and opened it, to find the pieces of a marvellous flute. A little confused, he walked with it back to Carter, kneeling once again.  
  
"When did you get this?" He asked, showing her his discovery.  
  
The woman gasped, her cheeks lifting. "That's not supposed to be here,"  
  
"You threw away this flute? Well it's here isn't it?"  
  
Carter wasn't listening. She was already tumbling to the window where she had thrown out the object. There were no signs at all of the transom having been broken. Not a crack, not a scratch, but it was the same glass, the same window. No, this was wrong.  
  
Her fingers brushed across the clear glass, gently tracing the material with her nails. A strong, twinkling echo flew across her ears; though mysterious, it held a familiar, comforting feeling.  
  
"Daniel?" She whispered, her lips barely moving.  
  
She turned back to Hammond, who was towering above her from behind, still holding the case. She grabbed it out of his hands, surprising the General, and ferociously assembled the instrument, as if fearing it would disappear from her grasp in the very next second, and once the flute being whole, held it to her eye-level, studying it with astonishment; for it held no sign of it having been ruined, there was not a crumble, it was instead glistening before her, a brilliant silver reflector, and, she could have sworn, it glowed for an instant: the same sort of shimmer she'd seen Daniel devoured into just hours ago; and she sighed; it was incredulous, but, paradoxically, believable, for she'd seen it with her own eyes, heard it with her own ears, the echo that had touched her senses and the death that had made her weep, was now doing something of the contrary.  
  
The General stept up beside her. "It's Daniel, isn't it?"  
  
Carter didn't answer; instead her head was bent low, cradling and kissing the flute in her hands.  
  
"You have to let him go now."  
  
"He's in this room, I can hear him," Carter thought. All she said, however, was, "Daniel . . .!"  
  
*  
  
In the next room, the Colonel, assembling his rifle to pass the long night, had heard everything the moment Carter got back to her lab, or had at least felt all the pain.  
  
Daniel's ascension had affected him more than he'd ever want to admit. He was the Colonel, the CO to the others, at least, most of the others, and, if he had a breakdown, then surely others would follow.  
  
Nice one, Jack, he mused, snapping various additional pieces together, let's just wallow in self-pity.  
  
There was no other alternative.  
  
*  
  
Jacob Carter weighed the healing device in his hand. It was not a heavy thing and had been known to cure those already dead. But it hadn't saved Daniel Jackson, a man who Sam obviously cared for.  
  
That was partly because of the choices Daniel had been given: live again as a mortal and fight forever that way, or go to a place far more better.  
  
Jacob knew well that if he'd been offered the same options, he would have chosen the path Daniel chose.  
  
Whether the decision was the right one out of the two, he didn't know. And he figured Daniel didn't know either - or at least not at the time.  
  
He placed the device back in its compartment.  
  
*  
  
The infirmary was quiet that night. Teal'c had somehow managed to walk in on a sleeping Janet.  
  
He quieted his steps and chose a chair by the rear end of Daniel's deathbed. He hadn't been able to clear his head since the man's death.  
  
Ascension meant a whole new world for Jackson the explorer to discover. It was known to be a great honour when one was given the opportunity.  
  
An honour. Who was celebrating? A death was not celebrated. The loss of a life was mourned for. That fact was universal.  
  
*  
  
Sam was more entranced by every note she produced, however broken each one sounded.  
  
Where was the unity of the group without Daniel?  
  
Who would Jack exasperate now?  
  
Who is, at this very moment, Daniel driving insane?  
  
Who now is Daniel?  
  
Where now is Daniel?  
  
What now is Daniel?  
  
She needed solid, factual answers. She couldn't get them. She blew harder. If the instrument broke, then let it. If the walls collapsed she couldn't care less.  
  
Why Daniel?  
  
FINI 


End file.
